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Authors: Muriel Spark
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has disrupted their minds.’
‘Appeal to their lower instincts,’ Gertrude says, ‘within the walls of
the convent. It’s only when exhorting the strangers outside that one appeals to
the higher. I hear a bell at your end, Alexandra. I hear a lovable bell.’
‘It’s the bell for Terce,’ Alexandra says. ‘Are you not homesick,
Gertrude, after your own kind?’
But Gertrude has rung off.
The nuns are assembled in the great chapter hall
and the Prioress Walburga addresses them. The nuns are arranged in semicircles according
to their degree, with the older nuns at the back, the lesser and more despised in the
middle rows and the novices in the front. Walburga stands on a dais at a table facing
them, with the most senior nuns on either side of her. These comprise Felicity,
Winifrede, Mildred and Alexandra.
‘Sisters, be still, be sober,’ says Walburga.
The nuns are fidgeting, however, in a way that has never happened before. The faces
glance and the eyes dart as if they were at the theatre waiting for the curtain to go
up, having paid for their tickets. Outside the rain pelts down on the green, on the
gravel, on the spreading leaves; and inside the nuns rustle as if a small tempest were
swelling up amongst them.
‘Be sober, be vigilant,’ says Walburga the Prioress, ‘for I have asked
Sister Alexandra to speak to you on the subject of our recent disturbances.’
Alexandra rises and bows to Walburga. She stands like a lightning-conductor, elegant in
her black robes, so soon to be more radiant in white. ‘Sisters, be still. I have
first a message from our esteemed Sister Gertrude. Sister Gertrude is at present
settling a dispute between two sects who reside beyond the Himalayas. The dispute is on
a point of doctrine which apparently has arisen from a mere spelling mistake in English.
True to her bold custom, Sister Gertrude has refused to furnish Rome with the tiresome
details of the squabble and bloodshed in that area and she is settling it herself out of
court. In the midst of these pressing affairs Sister Gertrude has found time to think of
our recent trifling upset here at cosy Crewe, and she begs us to appeal to your higher
instincts and wider vision, which is what I am about to do.’
The nuns are already sobered and made vigilant by the invocation of famous Gertrude, but
Felicity on the dais causes a nervous distraction by bringing out from some big pocket
under her black scapular a little embroidery frame. Felicity’s fingers busy
themselves with some extra flourish while Alexandra, having swept her eyes upon this
frail exhibition, proceeds.
‘Sisters,’ she says, ‘let me do as Sister Gertrude wishes; let me
appeal to your higher instincts. We had the extraordinary experience, last week, of an
intrusion into our midst, at midnight, of two young ruffians. It’s natural that
you should be distressed, and we know that you have been induced to gossip amongst
yourselves about the incident, stories of which have been circulated outside the convent
walls.’
Felicity’s fingers fly to and fro; her eyes are downcast with pale, devout lashes,
and she holds her sewing well up to meet them.
‘Now,’ says Alexandra, ‘I am not here before you to speak of the
ephemera of every day or of things that are of no account, material things that will
pass and will become, as the poet says,
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth …
I call rather to the attention of your higher
instincts the enduring tradition of one belonging to my own ancestral lineage,
Marguerite Marie Alacoque of the seventeenth century, my illustrious aunt, founder of
the great Abbeys of the Sacré Coeur. Let me remind you now of your good fortune,
for in those days, you must know, the nuns were rigidly divided in two parts, the
soeurs nobles
and the
soeurs bourgeoises.
Apart from this
‘Appeal to their lower instincts,’ Gertrude says, ‘within the walls of
the convent. It’s only when exhorting the strangers outside that one appeals to
the higher. I hear a bell at your end, Alexandra. I hear a lovable bell.’
‘It’s the bell for Terce,’ Alexandra says. ‘Are you not homesick,
Gertrude, after your own kind?’
But Gertrude has rung off.
The nuns are assembled in the great chapter hall
and the Prioress Walburga addresses them. The nuns are arranged in semicircles according
to their degree, with the older nuns at the back, the lesser and more despised in the
middle rows and the novices in the front. Walburga stands on a dais at a table facing
them, with the most senior nuns on either side of her. These comprise Felicity,
Winifrede, Mildred and Alexandra.
‘Sisters, be still, be sober,’ says Walburga.
The nuns are fidgeting, however, in a way that has never happened before. The faces
glance and the eyes dart as if they were at the theatre waiting for the curtain to go
up, having paid for their tickets. Outside the rain pelts down on the green, on the
gravel, on the spreading leaves; and inside the nuns rustle as if a small tempest were
swelling up amongst them.
‘Be sober, be vigilant,’ says Walburga the Prioress, ‘for I have asked
Sister Alexandra to speak to you on the subject of our recent disturbances.’
Alexandra rises and bows to Walburga. She stands like a lightning-conductor, elegant in
her black robes, so soon to be more radiant in white. ‘Sisters, be still. I have
first a message from our esteemed Sister Gertrude. Sister Gertrude is at present
settling a dispute between two sects who reside beyond the Himalayas. The dispute is on
a point of doctrine which apparently has arisen from a mere spelling mistake in English.
True to her bold custom, Sister Gertrude has refused to furnish Rome with the tiresome
details of the squabble and bloodshed in that area and she is settling it herself out of
court. In the midst of these pressing affairs Sister Gertrude has found time to think of
our recent trifling upset here at cosy Crewe, and she begs us to appeal to your higher
instincts and wider vision, which is what I am about to do.’
The nuns are already sobered and made vigilant by the invocation of famous Gertrude, but
Felicity on the dais causes a nervous distraction by bringing out from some big pocket
under her black scapular a little embroidery frame. Felicity’s fingers busy
themselves with some extra flourish while Alexandra, having swept her eyes upon this
frail exhibition, proceeds.
‘Sisters,’ she says, ‘let me do as Sister Gertrude wishes; let me
appeal to your higher instincts. We had the extraordinary experience, last week, of an
intrusion into our midst, at midnight, of two young ruffians. It’s natural that
you should be distressed, and we know that you have been induced to gossip amongst
yourselves about the incident, stories of which have been circulated outside the convent
walls.’
Felicity’s fingers fly to and fro; her eyes are downcast with pale, devout lashes,
and she holds her sewing well up to meet them.
‘Now,’ says Alexandra, ‘I am not here before you to speak of the
ephemera of every day or of things that are of no account, material things that will
pass and will become, as the poet says,
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth …
I call rather to the attention of your higher
instincts the enduring tradition of one belonging to my own ancestral lineage,
Marguerite Marie Alacoque of the seventeenth century, my illustrious aunt, founder of
the great Abbeys of the Sacré Coeur. Let me remind you now of your good fortune,
for in those days, you must know, the nuns were rigidly divided in two parts, the
soeurs nobles
and the
soeurs bourgeoises.
Apart from this
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